F-35 Sensor Fusion: How Three Sensors Become One Track
Share this story A fighter pilot looks down at the display and sees a symbol. One symbol, in one place, with a speed, a heading and a label saying what it is and whose side it is on. Behind that single symbol, several entirely different machines have reported entirely...
Austrian Eurofighters Deploy to Klagenfurt for the 20th Time
Share this story At lunchtime on Friday, 16 October, a flight of Austrian Air Force Eurofighters touched down at Klagenfurt, the civil airport of the southern state of Carinthia. Until Monday they will not train, not fly displays and not do circuits. They will sit on...
Gripen Flight Control Computer: Saab Wins SEK 1.3 Billion Order
Share this story Every second a Saab Gripen is in the air, a computer is quietly stopping it from tumbling out of the sky. The Gripen was designed to be aerodynamically unstable, because an unstable jet turns harder and faster, and it only flies straight because its...
Sky Shield II: When RAF Vulcans Slipped Through North America’s Air Defences
Share this story For twelve hours on Saturday 14 October 1961, the skies over the United States and Canada were closed to airliners. About 2,900 commercial flights were cancelled or delayed while NORAD, the North American Air Defense Command, fought off a simulated...
FAA 51 Percent Rule: What “Amateur-Built” Actually Means
Share this story Somewhere over the Sonoran Desert there is a yellow and blue two-seater turning in the evening light, and the person who owns it also built it. Not assembled it from a crate over a weekend. Built it, over several years, in a garage, with a rivet gun....
Neptune Missile Explained: Ukraine’s Ship-Killer Turned Deep-Strike Weapon
Share this story In April 2022, Ukraine says, two missiles hit the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. The cruiser Moskva caught fire, its ammunition exploded, and the ship sank. The weapon Ukraine credited was a missile almost nobody outside the region had...
Saab GlobalEye: Sweden’s First S 106 Radar Jet Unveiled
Share this story Ever since it gave its radar planes to Ukraine, Sweden has defended its airspace without an airborne early warning aircraft of its own. That gap is now closing. On 15 October 2026, Saab presented the first GlobalEye built for the Swedish Air Force, a...
Borisoglebsk Strike: Neptune Missiles Hit Six Russian Su-34s
Share this story Shortly before 22:00 local time on 14 October, the missile alert sounded over the Voronezh region. A few minutes later residents of Borisoglebsk heard explosions, and a large fire lit up the military airfield east of town. By morning, Ukraine’s...
NATO Nuclear Sharing Explained: Steadfast Noon and the Dual-Capable Jets
Share this story Every October, a few dozen NATO fighter jets fly a rehearsal for a mission their crews hope they never fly for real: delivering an American nuclear bomb on behalf of the whole alliance. The exercise is called Steadfast Noon. This year it began on 13...
EWR VJ 101: The First VTOL Fighter to Break the Sound Barrier
Share this story On 29 July 1964, a silver test aircraft from southern Germany went faster than sound. That alone was nothing new in 1964; the Bell X-1 had done it 17 years earlier. What made the EWR VJ 101 C special was that it could also take off straight up, hover,...
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